So I've decided to build an electric bass guitar. Building my own guitars is an idea that I've toyed with for years but have never gotten the courage to pull the trigger. This is for several reasons- The materials are too expensive, it was beyond my skill level as a woodworker, I didn't have the time, I had no place to do the work, bla bla bla bla. The fact is these excuses don't apply to me at this point in time so there is no reason for me to delay. I am ready to give this a shot.
Here's a little bit about me. I have been playing music for the better part of my life. Although I dabble with other instruments my primary tools are bass (electric or upright) or guitar. I play bass for a fairly active band in San Francisco called Guella - www.guellamusic.com. I have been playing on the same Fender Jazz Bass (Japanese model) since I was 15. I upgraded the pick-ups some years ago and the guitar has treated me very well over the years. Recently, I bought an Ampeg svt 7 amp head. Instead of buying a new cabinet, I built my own with a beautiful 15" Celestion 600 watt driver. This set-up has a monster crystal clear sound in a small, relatively lightweight package. This project inspired me to look into building an actual guitar.
At this point I should mention that I make my living as a carpenter. Generally, I work on houses doing both rough and finish carpentry. For the most part, working on homes is nothing like building musical instruments. However, there are occasional fine finish jobs where we really start to gain an understanding of wood and the nature in which it behaves. It was these jobs that made me believe that I could successfully build a guitar. Another advantage of my profession is that I have been collecting tools for some time now. It would be very difficult and expensive to go completely from scratch to having the tools you need to build a guitar all at once. I also have access to power tools although I would like to build most of this by hand. A table saw can rip a piece in 15 seconds where as doing this by hand would be inaccurate, time consuming, and exhausting. So in the name of actually finishing an instrument I decided to use power tools where it seemed so obviously advantageous.
So in closing for now, I do have the skill set required to make a bass successfully as well as the tools. As for the materials being too expensive, I have slowly collected what I need over time in order to ease the pain. Overall I think I've spent about as much as you'd pay for a middle of the road new instrument, probably nothing american made. Keep in mind that this is my first build so I've had to acquire tools. I would say that to build a second instrument would be very cheap relative to a high end production guitar.
I recently moved into a place with a garage where I've set up a workspace so I can't use that as a reason to stall anymore. As for not having enough time, well I think that's just a lame excuse.
I'll post more later with some pics.
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